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| Donna Figueroa |
I am pleased to have a very special guest today! Donna Figueroa is an actor who has worked on stage and on the big and small screens. Her credits include several television commercials and voice-overs for animation, commercials and industrial projects. She is also a producer and performer at Story Salon, Los Angeles's longest running storytelling venue. Please help me welcome Donna, as she tells us about her debut novel, Fall Again Beginnings, now available at Amazon!
Thank you, Donna, for joining me today. I read Fall Again Beginnings and thoroughly enjoyed the story! So, first of all, tell us a little about it.
Fall Again: Beginnings is the first installment of a four part contemporary
romantic series that follows the lives and careers of two working actors over
two decades. In
Beginnings, readers will meet actors Marc & Lauren and
their closest friends in the optimistic New York City of the 1980’s.
Unfortunately, Marc and Lauren meet at the wrong time in their lives while they
are both building careers and Marc has a serious girlfriend. Decorum dictates
that their relationship remain in the boundaries of a platonic friendship, a
task that over time will become increasingly difficult. Despite their best
efforts, Marc & Lauren fall in love.
What inspired you to write it?
In the Fall Again Series I wanted
to explore several themes; meeting the right person at the wrong time, the
power of a first love, friendships, and
the randomness of luck, timing and situations that can shape a life and career.
As a hopeless romantic, I’ve often
looked at events in my life and have marveled at how I’ve come to be where I am
today. It amazes me that minor events can completely change the course of a
life.
For example, as I was about to
graduate from Emerson College in Boston MA, I was waiting to hear if I had been
hired as an actor for the coming season of The Boston Shakespeare Company. My
two auditions had gone extremely well and I was hopeful. I was told I’d hear if
I’d made the company by the end of the week.
On Friday night I was devastated when I’d heard nothing. However, two
days later I was offered a job in a theater company in Chicago and was on a
plane to the Midwest the first thing Wednesday morning and in my first
rehearsal Thursday morning! On Thursday night I received a call from a friend
back in Boston congratulating me; The Boston Shakespeare Company wanted to
offer me a contract for the next season…and I was already committed to the
theater in Chicago!
Had I stayed in Boston, I never
would have made the contact who would introduce me to a Los Angeles contact who
asked me to come to an audition in Los Angeles. Instead of making a quick two
or three day trip (and in the most impulsive move of my life), I moved to LA
three weeks later and have never looked back! A few years later I met the man
who I would eventually marry. If the company in Boston had contacted me earlier
my life would have been very different…not necessarily bad, just different.
Frankly, I can’t imagine my life without my husband Tony.
A personal goal in writing
Fall Again was to create a realistic
look at the lives of working actors whose profession is often misunderstood and
represented.
How did your background in acting influence your
writing?
A friend of mine (an Emmy Award
winning writer) told me that I write like
an actor, that is, I try to fully
visualize the scene in my imagination as I write, and often read dialogue aloud
to hear my character’s voices. I find that I create characters for the page the
same way I would create a character for an acting role for the stage or screen.
One of my first tasks in approaching an acting role is to create a strong
backstory. I do the same in my writing, feeling that a strong backstory will
make a fictional character real.
I think it goes without saying that
several of my personal experiences, as well as the industry experiences of many
of my fellow actors, inspired events and situations in the Fall Again Series.
You’ve said that the Fall Again series started as a short story.
How did it evolve into a novel?
I have developed procrastination
into an art form.
Fall Again: Beginnings is the first book in the
Fall Again Series. My original plan had been to write a short story
entitled
Time for Coffee, where two
actors (who would eventually become Marc & Lauren) meet after several years
on Sunset Boulevard outside of a casting studio as they’re both leaving an
audition. Neither has a lot of time and decide to have coffee where they
discuss their lives, careers and why they separated years before.
The problem was I could never find
the time to write this story, but the characters remained in my head and
started to take on a life of their own. By the time I decided to start writing
there was too much to the story. I no longer knew how to tell this story as
short story, and I decided to write a stand-alone novel. After I completed a
first draft, I realized that I had only told part of the story and owed it to my
characters to tell their entire
story. I had grown to respect them too much to do anything less. That’s when
the novel morphed into a series.
As an author, what is your writing process? How long did it take you to
complete Fall Again?
When I’m working on a project I try
to write every day. I am most productive during the mid-morning hours or after
seven in the evenings. I find a spot where I can relax with my laptop (though I
somehow managed to write my first draft on a notebook) and allow my imagination
to flow onto the page. I don’t outline on paper, but I do have a mental plan on
what I’ll write for each session. I always keep a notebook close by just in case
inspiration strikes and I need to jot down a few quick notes that I can easily
incorporate into a manuscript.
I am always very aware of my
surroundings (an actor’s trait) and will happily take inspiration and
ideas from my world view. (I heard an interesting name one day which became the
name of a character in the next installment, Fall Again: Lost Boy.)
One very important part of my
writing process is music. My playlist for the Fall Again Series was eclectic
ranging from Chopin to Billy Joel and David Benoit to a recent discovery, bass
player and vocalist Nathan East.
Each novel in the
Fall Again Series
begins with a song lyric which sets the tone of the story.
Fall Again:
Beginnings starts with the first few lines of the classic song
On Broadway.
I began writing Fall Again on
November 1, 2012 and finished sometime in early 2015. The most difficult part of
the writing process was stopping.
What’s next for you?
As a writer, my next project will
be a stand-alone novel entitled A Private
Family Matter. This is the story of another working actor who returns home
to attend a family funeral. In this novel I’m exploring family dynamics and the
humorous elements which always surround these events.
As a working actor, I am constantly
auditioning for various projects here in Los Angeles. I’m currently in the process
of narrating an audio book; a crime drama that features a strong heroine,
several teenaged girls and other characters on both sides of the law. I’m
enjoying creating the different characters, their voices…and am having a great
time and loving the process. For many actors, voiceover is the purest form of
acting: it’s you, a microphone and your imagination!
